Designing Joe Cullen's personal practice room stage setting

Sometimes opportinity presents itself in the strangest way - which is how I ended up designing the 'stage' setting for Rockstar Joe Cullen's own personal practice room

I have never met Joe in person - we have been in the same room ONCE - at the MODUS/MDA exhibition in Northampton 2025, but I was busy helping sort out something and taken the time to speak to Nathan Aspinall about (ironically) a stage design and the importance of his snake logo having eyes

That was as close as I have come to metting Joe face - to - face. However I have been tasked by North West events to create a custom stage and board surround for one of their upcoming exhibitions with Joe, and in searching for ideas and content to create the bespoke staging

Cullen is known for his magnificent walk on where he walks through the crowd, to the iconic sounds of Oasis's DONT LOOK BACK IN ANGER - which always gets the crowd singing and brings the energy to every exhition hre appears on

It was here that i found this photo from the Northampton exhibition (where I had seen Joe's walk on and the effect it had on the crowd

This sums up what you get with Joe at an exhibition and i knew was perfect for what i wanted to create - a real focus on the music, the energy, the walk on and MORE than just the darts. In addition I made sure that the stage followed in line with Joe's red and black colour scheme (that is probably a refelction of his beloved Manchester Utd)

The stage ended up looking like this and was popular with the darts fans in the North West. I was pleased with the final result and ended up tweeting the original picture with the Hashtag AURA and tagged in Joe Cullen - to which he retweeted and everything started from there!

Cullen was redecorating and wanted to make hsi practice room special - so he messaged me and asked if I could help create a stage set for him.

We discussed what he wanted it to look like and any colour schemes etc - as I like to offer fully bespoke products and give the customer what they want. The copnversation went back and forth and the key take away was this 'don't be frightened to say exactly what you want, you can't offend me' and Joe replying 'good. Things work quicker that way'

The biggest challenge Joe set me was he wanted it to look simple and clean - whereas my usual style is 'More is More' and Joe wanted his own logo alongside his beloved Manchester United and Wigan Warriors logos - so i experimented with different designs and ideas to come up with something that Joe LOVED.

I still was putting too much on the boards and Joe wanted it to be cleaner and smoother - so we lost the stars, search lights etc and rid of the picture of Cullen himself

When we had the design finalised - it was time to get the board printed

And then installed! Joe was delighted with the final result and sent me a pic of the board in its full glory - he already had his own board surround - which we made sure matched up with the new design

and because he has his trophies alongside the practice board - I photoshopped the world championship in for him as well!